Dubai: In a bizarre twist to the murder case of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai last month, a host of apparently fake Facebook pages in the names of the suspects have sprung up.
Peter Elvinger — previously identified by Dubai Police as the ringleader behind the operation — has a page on the social networking site. His employer is listed as ‘Mossad' and he so far has more than 50 friends, including some of the other 25 suspects.
Suspect Kevin Daveron, who used an Irish passport, has ‘IRA High School' listed under education and has ‘made friends' with co-suspects Evan Dennings, Gail Folliard and Jonathan Louis Graham.
The profile pictures of the suspects displayed are the same as those released by Dubai Police.
Some of the suspects' fake pages are also friends with Al Mabhouh himself. The profile picture of the Hamas commander shows him shrouded before his funeral. ‘Prof killer' and ‘Wapon [sic.] buyer' are listed under ‘interests', while ‘favourite TV shows' and ‘movies' are listed as James Bond.
‘Friends'
A total of 29 people, including real social networking site users, have made ‘friends' with Al Mabhouh.
The social networking site allows the public to create ‘profile pages' for themselves, add personal information, upload video and images and send messages to other members of Facebook.
Due to the nature of the site, anyone can set up a profile with any picture and information, as there is no verification process. Users need a valid email address and also need to be over the age of 13 to sign up.
Royal spy?
Suspect Stephen Daniel Hodes, was educated at the ‘Royal School for spys' according to his profile and there is a bookmarked webpage on his profile ‘Fraudulent Passports for Assasins' [sic.]
Ironically, the fake page for Folliard, the original suspect linked to Daveron, shows she was educated at ‘MI6 ‘99' and currently has almost 200 friends.
According to Facebook statistics, the site has more than 400 million active users. It is not clear how many of these are genuine.
Facebook officials were not available for comment.
